A full day

I hurried through my office work this morning so I could drive into town. First and foremost, I sped directly to the restaurant supply! But...they didn't have anything I wanted. They're not a very fancy restaurant supply. Still, I emerged with a kickass set of every possible size of biscuit cutters, which faithful readers will recall that I needed very much. (I can probably use a medium-sized one as an English muffin ring if I have to. Still, I don't relish the idea of making one muffin at a time! I guess I might have to order the rings from Amazon after all. Either that, or make all different sizes of English muffins. That might be funny in a way.)

My Spidey sense was tingling when I got to town, so I drove over to the Goodwill store. Sure enough, I ended up with four pairs of beautiful nearly-new shoes--exactly the sorts of things I'd been looking for but hadn't been able to find new--for $5 apiece. Oddly, I didn't find anything else at Goodwill. Just shoes.

I was on my way to my friend J.'s place (to drop off the leftovers of what I'd made for contest winner Jo) when I spotted a sign for a Red Cross blood drive. Since I'm an obsessive nutrition-tracker, it occurred to me that giving blood was a free, benevolent way to get my iron level and blood pressure checked. I marched in the door and signed my name before I had a chance to chicken out. Nearly an hour later, I was still there, because it turns out I have been to Africa within the last three years and, while that didn't disqualify me, it was a piece of information that they wanted to enter into their new software, which they were having trouble figuring out.

Anyhow: Iron level 38 (lowish but absolutely fine). Blood pressure 90 over 70. Heart rate 60 (fine, but probably artificially high because I was starting to panic by then).

I didn't faint. And bonus: I got a Nutter Butter cookie! I haven't had one of those in years.

Once I was safe to drive, I went to J.'s place and gave her the pastries. She had just been to a big international grocery in Atlanta and rewarded me with a packet of Hobnobs! She knows the way to my heart.

My last stops were the copy shop (to print out "free dog" posters) and two locations of the Taco Stand (to put the posters up on the bulletin boards). Then it was time to go home. Way past time, really.

Dinner: Rice-paper spring rolls with noodles, shrimp, cilantro, bean sprouts, and cucumbers. Side of peanut sauce. Dessert: Pears poached in red wine, served over plain yogurt. It's nice to have something so simple and light after all the ridiculousness that's been going on around here.